Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. So, on Friday night I watched the premiere of Geekvolution's new movie, Superhero Rewind: The Movie, on YouTube. For those of you who don't know, Geekvolution is a YouTube channel that has been around since 2008 when the channel's host, Captain Logan, began his review show, Superhero Rewind, where he reviews every superhero movie ever produced. The movie is a sequel to Cap's webseries, Spawn Year, which came out from 2012 to 2014. Anyway, in the movie a version of Captain Logan from 2044 goes back to the year 1996 to convince his 12 year old self (played by his oldest son, Jayson) to never start Superhero Rewind in the first place.
Watching the movie has inspired me to start a new blog series called Geekdom in 1996. In this series I'll be talking about something geeky that came out in 1996 whether it's a book, a video game, a movie, a comic or a TV show, that I've seen previously. It doesn't matter when I saw it, as long as I've seen it. In this installment, I'm talking about two special episodes of Star Trek. Let's get into it!
I decided to do a double feature of the two 30th anniversary episodes of Star Trek that came out in the fall of 1996. Because I'm going in airdate order, the first of these two episodes I'm talking about today is the second episode of the third season of Star Trek: Voyager, "Flashback", which aired on Wednesday, September 11th, 1996. Unlike the two part episode, "Unification", which acted as the 25th anniversary of Star Trek episode for Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Flashback" isn't a present day teamup between TOS and Voyager. Instead it reveals that Tuvok was a member of the crew of the USS Excelsior, under the command of Captain Hikaru Sulu during the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which came out in 1991 to celebrate Star Trek's 25th Anniversary.
Besides George Takei and Grace Lee Whitney, who reprise their roles of Hikaru Sulu and Janice Rand from TOS, the production crew was able to get the majority of the people who played the Excelsior's crew in Star Trek VI to come back to reprise their roles from the movie. I think there was only one or two people who were in the movie that weren't in the episode. Which is pretty impressive considering the movie filmed six years earlier and had come out five years earlier. Obviously they recreated the Excelsior's bridge.
I remember when I first saw this episode. It was Boxing Day 1996, the Canadian channel that Voyager aired on at the time reran the episode, and my family were up at the cottage to have Christmas dinner with my dad's side of the family. Grandma had put the TV on after we had had dinner and opened presents and the episode was on. This was before I was on the internet, and I wasn't getting issues of Star Trek Communicator, so I had no idea that George Takei was returning to play Sulu in the episode. So when he popped up out of the cloud of coolant from the ruptured plasma conduit, I was pleasantly surprised as Sulu was, and still is, one of my favourite characters in TOS. Other than Rand appearing in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and in the "Tabukan Syndrome" story arc of DC Comics's late '80s-mid '90s Star Trek (TOS) comic book series, which chronicled Sulu's first mission as captain of the Excelsior, I didn't really remember her that well from TOS. Because of that, her return wasn't as big for me as Sulu's return was.
Of all of the characters from Voyager, Tuvok made the most sense since he's a Vulcan, and Vulcans have fairly long lives. And I felt he didn't feel shoehorned into the scenes from Star Trek VI that they recreated for this episode. I also felt that the episode filled in the gaps of what Sulu and the Excelsior were doing inbetween their scenes in the movie as they don't really have that many scenes in the movie.
There was a novelization for the episode, which I had in the 2010s, but I don't think I actually got around to reading it. Partly because by then I was fully steeped in finishing The New Jedi Order and trying to keep up with the Voyager relaunch novels that were coming out at the time.
"Trials and Tribble-ations" is a completely different story. Because I didn't watch DS9 until it was on in reruns when I was in high school in the early to mid 2000s, I didn't see this episode until either the mid 2000s during one of those reruns, or I was an adult and I got all of Star Trek (up to that point) on an external hard drive. Regardless, I've seen it a few times, but not nearly as often as other people have.
The episode originally aired on Monday, November 4th, 1996, and unlike "Flashback", this episode didn't rerun on Boxing Day. Or, if it did, it was later at night, after I'd gone to bed. TOS isn't my favourite Star Trek series. I appreciate the show for what it did as the series that launched the franchise, but also what it did for pop culture, and society as a whole, but I honestly prefer the TOS movies over the TV show. However, "Trials and Tribble-ations" really highlights the differences between the TOS era and the TNG/DS9/Voyager era. Not just in terms of technology like communicators and tricorders, but also the visual style of each era. DS9 is visually darker and more atmospheric, while TOS is bright, colourful and cheesy, similar to how the 1966 Batman TV series looks. Weirdly enough the two visual styles blend well together in this episode.
Having seen the bonus features on this episode from the DS9 season 5 DVD box set, as they're included, along with the episode, on the "Trouble with Tribbles" disc in the TOS season 2 Blu-ray set, I understand how much of an undertaking making this episode was. Not just in getting the actor who originally played Arne Darvin in the original episode, Charlie Brill, to come back to reprise the role, but, also placing the DS9 characters seamlessly into the original footage from the 1967 episode of TOS. They also had to recreate the original Enterprise as well as Space Station K-7, and the Klingon Battle Cruiser, as the original effects from the '60s wouldn't hold up on 1996 television in a new episode. There's even a shot from the TOS episode, "Mirror, Mirror" from the end of the episode where Kirk meets the main universe's version of Marlena Moreau, whom he met in the Mirror Universe, which was altered to have Sisko take Marlena's place, so that Sisko could, after a fashion, meet Kirk, since the de-aging techniques that movies and TV shows use today, didn't exist back then, so they couldn't film a brand new scene with William Shatner and Avery Brooks together.
Story wise, both episodes are pretty straightforward. The time travel in "Trials and Tribble-ations" is well explained with the Orb of Time from the Prophets, and even Tuvok's mind meld was an easy way to understand how Janeway and Tuvok ended up on the Excelsior with Tuvok taking the place of his younger self.
I really like these two episodes. While "Flashback" is nostalgic for me because of when and where I first watched it, "Trials and Tribble-ations" is just a fun episode that blends TOS and DS9 together perfectly.
That's it for me for today. I'm not sure if I'm going to do other blog posts this week because I have to go for my annual ultrasound on Friday, I'm doing groceries tomorrow, and I'm getting ready for Ottawa Comiccon which is this weekend. I'm going on Sunday since I had to change my plans slightly due to the ultrasound happening early Friday morning. But, I'll be back here as soon as I possibly can. If I don't see you before Comiccon, have a great rest of the week and I will see you next week. Take care.
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